Keynote Speaker

Dr. Thomas Zitter

Dr. Tom Zitter, Professor of Plant Pathology at Cornell University will be giving a keynote address titled “Pepper Diseases through the Years: A Review". Tom conducts applied research and extension in plant pathology to identify methods of crop protection and disease management, and makes disease control recommendations for vegetables. He has a BS degree in Botany and a PhD in Plant Pathology, both from Michigan State University.  Upon graduation he became a plant pathologist at the University of Florida, Everglades Experiment Station in Belle Glade, for 11 years.  He has been at Cornell since 1979. His extension responsibilities at Cornell include management and control of fresh market vegetable crop diseases; education of vegetable growers, agribusiness and extension field staff on crop disease biology, identification, management, scouting and control; and development and testing of crop IPM strategies for vegetable farms.  His research responsibilities include biology, epidemiology and management of soilborne and foliar diseases of potato, tomato, pepper and cucurbits; identification and incorporation of genes for disease resistance; identification of novel methods of control, and integrating these methods into effective crop production practices.

Tom is also responsible for disease control recommendations (guidelines) for most fresh market vegetable crops, and he developed and maintains VegetableMDOnline, a web site which is used worldwide with more than 5 million hits annually.